MSNBC on Thursday offered an immediate, and typically negative, review of Donald Trump’s debut in Davos, Switzerland. Hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi mocked the “uninformed,” “strange,” nonsensical” conversation that the President had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ruhle made sure to inject race into it, earlier noting that Trump was “flanked almost entirely” by “white guys.”
After the President finished a meeting with Netanyahu, Ruhle immediately trashed: “For those who understand Israeli, Palestinian relations, couldn't you argue he was pretty uninformed?” Ruhle’s anger came from Trump restating his comments with regard to a United Nations vote. On Friday, he noted: “We we give billions of dollars away every year to countries and in many cases, those countries don't even support us.”
The President added, “Israel has always supported the United States.” Velshi chose to intrepret the remarks as somehow meaning that Trump didn’t know how much the U.S. gives to Israel. Velshi spat: “We give the Israelis substantially more money and have for every year for the last — I don’t know— 30-plus years than the Palestinians ever seen.”
The journalist sneered, “That was just a nonsensical conversation that the President was having with the prime minister Netanyahu.” Later in the morning, Velshi returned to the MSNBC airwaves to repeat his derision: “Again, it was a very strange, uninformed conversation.”
Earlier, Ruhle looked at the video of Trump in Davos and excoriated, “When I look at President Trump right there... he's flanked almost entirely... by white guys.”
A partial transcript of the segment, which aired on January 25, is below:
MSNBC Live
1/25/18
9:10STEPHANIE RUHLE: We should point out one other thing, the chair people of Davos this year, this year there are seven, I believe all of them are women. When I look at President Trump right there, I meed Klaus Schwab is with him, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, he's flanked almost entirely — well, there's one — by white guys.
9:55am
DONALD TRUMP: We give the Israelis substantially more money and have for every year for the last 30 plus years than the Palestinians ever seen.”
...
TRUMP: If we could make peace between Israel and the Palestinians, if we could do that, I would consider that one of our truly great achievements. But the money is on the table. The money was never on the table. I tell you up-front. We give them tremendous amounts, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, that money is on the table. Because why should we do that if they're doing nothing for us? And what we want to do for them is help them. We want to create peace and save lives and we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens, but the money is on the table.
RUHLE: Ali, you first. For those who understand Israeli, Palestinian relations, can you can you argue he was pretty uninformed?
...
ALI VELSHI: That was remarkable what the President just said. First of all, he seems to have made news by saying they've got some sort of proposed deal. That would be news to the Palestinians, I'm sure. But the whole idea that he said that the Palestinians could never get past Jerusalem, “so I just took it off the table.” To suggest that somehow a sticking point in the negotiation by just removing it, all of a sudden there’s a deal in the upping. A quick Google search kept on saying nobody ever said we give the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars, anybody with a phone would know this. But the fact is, we give the Israelis substantially more money and have for every year for the last 30 plus years than the Palestinians ever seen. It was just a nonsensical conversation that the President was having with the prime minister Netanyahu.
...11:07
VELSHI: So, Stephanie, the President is right, the United States probably averages, in 2016 about $750 million in aid in various ways to the Palestinian Authority, compared to $3.6 billion in aid to Israel. So, again, it was a very strange, uninformed conversation, but it was a friendly one with Benjamin Netanyahu. That is one of the ways in which the president has started his visit to Davos, with a friendly reception when he got here and friendly meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
